Eden Relics (A Zac Woods novel #1): Author royalties for Cancer Research

by N Williams

  Popping the lock with the screwdriver, he slowly opened the door an inch or two. If he was the first to arrive then the broken lock would be discovered, but he hoped it would pass for a simple break-in. All he needed was some time to hide. The element of surprise would be with him.

  Satisfied that all was quiet within, he squeezed through the gap and waited until his eyes became accustomed to the dark. He could see large cube-shaped shadows in the middle of the room. The warehouse wasn't big, but the crates were too far away to identify without light. He fished around the door for a lamp. On the floor to the left, he found what he was looking for. A small oil lamp was squeezed between some wooden tea chests. Struggling to control his hands, he lit the wick and waited for the light to settle. He had never felt so cold; his fingers had turned blue, and it felt like the extreme chill had even frozen his soul.

  The large boxes in the middle of the floor were similar to the crates on the ship. He cautiously walked over. 'Shit!' he mumbled. The box was the same one used to ship the relics. The lid was open, and there was nothing inside. He was too late. His employers would be far from happy, but he had a damn good idea where they would have been taken. The link between the opera singer and Swansea was too much of a coincidence.

  He needed rest. His head felt like it would burst and his stomach seemed determined to give up its contents. Renardi ran for the door just as he lost his battle with nausea. An explosion of vomit splattered the road outside. Heaving, he held his sides as the pain racked his body. He had just registered the unusual nature of the contents of his stomach when the crippling pain in his chest dropped him to his knees. Within seconds, the only life left in Renardi's body was a small black fly crawling out of the sleeve of his jacket and taking to the unseasonably freezing air of Swansea.

  *

  The discovery of a body near the building site had delayed work for a couple of hours, but Cyril Jeffries was keen to catch up with the time he’d lost. The new boy had been more trouble than he was worth, turning up late for work three days on the trot. Cyril had let him go. There were too many good men out there looking for work to justify keeping a slacker employed, even if the lad was his cousin. Head throbbing and feeling the first aches of an impending dose of flu, Cyril cursed his luck. If he didn’t get the work done by the end of the week, he wasn’t likely to get paid the full price on offer.

  Dropping down into the trench he’d single-handedly cut, he noticed something odd. Part of the new clay pipe had been blocked with dirt. Taking his shovel, he quickly cleared the muck from the pipe and found a long thin wooden box. Sliding it out, he opened the lid. Inside was a strange-looking stick. Why would anyone bury a stick, and why would they put it in a box? He lifted the object out and held it in his hands. His hands began to tingle, a strange sensation building in strength, becoming a strong vibration moving up his hands to his arms and then shoulders. He turned the object over in his hands but could find nothing that could cause the vibrations. Checking no one was watching, Cyril placed the object back into the box and closed the lid. He lifted the box from the trench and climbed up after it, suddenly feeling better. His head had cleared, and the aches had gone.

  Part 2

  CHAPTER 1

  Upper Swansea Valley, Wales. Present Day.

  Steep steps were not ideal for Ben Perkins. His aging legs ached as he climbed to the top floor of the castle. The narrow, dark wood staircase led to the old private apartment at the rear of the castle, once the boudoir of the acclaimed opera singer Adelina Patti. Ben wondered if the tales of her bedroom antics were true.

  The bedroom was now bare. The rotten floorboards protruding through the linoleum, like the ribs of a rotting carcass, creaked ominously under his weight. He made his way carefully over to a partition wall between the door and the small windows. Only the line of cracked powder-blue plaster suggested the location of where the ornate cast iron fireplace had once been before the hospital administrators had ripped the heart out of the place decades after Patti’s time.

  A small head-less bed had been pushed up against the wall behind the door, the old stained mattress in need of a surgeon’s attention. The cracked, flaking cornices had once been beautiful, he supposed, though now they looked sick and dying and out of place against the clinical bed lights and patient alarms installed decades later.

  Motes of dust danced in the thin swathes of light coming from the wooden sash windows. The smell of damp and rotting wood tickled the back of the old man’s throat as he fought the urge to heave. It was hard for Ben to visualise the grand intentions of the new owner, but when the work was eventually completed the valley would have another outstanding tourist attraction. The old place was certainly worthy of the investment. It had played host to so many influential people over its relatively short existence, and now there was a buzz of excitement amongst the staff, a building sense of expectation that they were a part of something momentous and worth saving.

  Ben carefully placed his toolbox onto the floorboards and flipped open the catch. He’d made sure there was enough plaster powder mix for the job; he didn’t want an unnecessary trek back down those stairs again. A two-litre plastic lemonade bottle held the water for the mix. He took a small screwdriver from the box and started chipping away at the crumbling outline of the former fireplace, instinctively covering his head as each blow made another plaster projectile land close by. The hole would have to be filled with some form of support before he could apply the new skim. He sighed at the thought of trudging back down the stairs again to get some chicken wire. Pulling at the old canvas-backed linoleum floor covering - another legacy of the hospital - the old brown fire-tiles of the surround looked in surprisingly good condition. A faded yellow newspaper was laid out across the tiles, forming a primitive barrier between the linoleum and the ceramic squares. The paper might make a support for the plaster if he stuffed it into the hole. It wouldn’t be the best solution, but it would save a long and unwelcome walk.

  With care, Ben peeled the brittle sheets apart. The old adverts for OXO Cubes and Marmalade brought a smile. Amazing, he thought; a paper this old would be worth a couple of bob on eBay. He’d try his luck on the auction site later. He was fascinated by how it was possible to sell almost anything on the web.

  He began carefully folding the paper again when he noticed the headline article circled in ink, and a line of handwriting in the top corner of the front page. “Henry’s dead!”

  Ben read the first few lines of the article:

  “Henry Carre Lost in Duchess Disaster. The Prime Minister today announced in the Commons that it is with great sadness that the deaths of both Henry and Hayward Carre must be reported. Henry was a Member of Her Majesty’s Government for nearly twenty years whilst his brother was a renowned yet somewhat fanciful adventurer.”

  With the paper placed carefully into his toolbox, Ben’s old twisted arthritic fingers knocked the rest of the plaster out of the hole. He’d surely have to get that chicken wire now. He flipped the switch on his torch to check the extent of damp behind the plaster. Something inside the cavity reflected light from the torch. He peered closer and could see what looked like an old biscuit tin stuffed into a small space behind the fireplace. He reached inside and pulled the tin out of the hole.

  Ben scraped his screwdriver around the rusted lid and forced open the box. Inside lay a small leather book and a four-inch clay cylinder etched with shallow grooves. The object looked strangely familiar. It reminded him of the type used by Edison before the introduction of vinyl discs.

  He opened the cover of a handwritten diary. It seemed the words were in Italian with some lists written in English. Folded into the middle pages of the diary was a loose sheet of paper. Ben opened the folds. It was a single sheet of music. The notes and lyrics of the song had been handwritten, and the title “Home Sweet Home” scrawled at the top. He smiled to himself. This might be Adelina’s handwriting. It was well known that she had recorded “Home Sweet Home” within the walls of the cast
le and the original recording had been damaged years before, but Ben knew a copy of her singing the song had found its way onto the Internet. If this was Adelina’s own copy of the manuscript, then it would be worth a small fortune on eBay, and if the disc was anything to do with her, it too could fetch really big money.

  Was this theft? He would have to be careful. It wouldn’t hurt to get an idea of its value. He could get someone else to sell it for him, someone with no obvious link to the castle.

  CHAPTER 2

  The large teak doors of the office seemed forever distant. The trek along the corridor gave a person time to think, and that was the intention of the CEO - power and control didn’t have to be overt. Bradley Farrell almost skipped down the Axminster runner and knocked enthusiastically on the door to Sir Eddie’s office. ‘Come!’

  The heavy double doors opened onto an expansive room littered with what Farrell assumed were expensive paintings. They seemed to be everywhere. The lack of order was something that bothered the immaculate Farrell. Sir Eddie seemed so organised in every other respect. Sir Eddison Stockwell seemed helplessly lost in the high wingback leather chair, gazing out over the River Thames. The view from the office was breath taking. Even through the never ending drizzle of the past week the picture was still impressive. The huge windows of the office provided unspoiled views of both riverbanks. It would have been Farrell’s favourite place in the building had it not been the sanctum of the perpetually miserable Chief Executive. Sir Eddie seemed reluctant to tear himself away from the view. ‘What is it, Bradley?’

  ‘I have some exciting news, Sir. A member of the research team was trawling the internet and found something on eBay, purely by chance. What are the odds on that eh?’

  ‘Depends on what it is.’

  Hardly able to contain his excitement, Farrell continued. ‘Well, of course, but this is the remarkable thing; he followed a link and found an eBay auction for a diary.’ Sir Eddie pushed himself up in his chair to face his assistant. Farrell knew that there was only one diary he would be excited by. ‘That’s right, Sir. The diary is up for sale.’

  The blood seemed to drain instantly from Sir Eddie’s already deathly grey complexion. ‘How?...Where?...How much?’ he stammered.

  Farrell walked around the oversized teak desk to Sir Eddie’s computer. ‘May I?’

  The old man swivelled his chair around to face the desk. ‘Of course.’

  Quickly flicking through some web pages until he found the one he wanted, Farrell stood aside to let his boss see some images of a small leather diary. One of the open pages showed the date; 1914. ‘It’s the right date.’

  ‘What makes you think it’s hers?’

  Farrell scrolled down the page to a text box which contained a copy of the text of the inside page. ‘It’s written in Italian, and the English note accompanying the text explains that the provenance of the diary was undeniable. But the coup-de-grâce was the object which accompanied it - an early recording cylinder and sheet of music.’

  The auction had six days left to run, and Sir Eddie’s mood began to plummet again as he saw that someone else had already placed a bid for the book. ‘Check the text of the page photographed in the advert. Translate it quickly and let me know the result. If it is her diary I want you to secure it, at whatever cost. We cannot let this fall into the hands of anyone else. We have to have it, Bradley, even if it means that you sit by the computer all day and all night to win it. Understand?’

  ‘Yes, Sir! I’ll do that. If you have no objections, I would also like to trace the seller. Perhaps we can persuade him to part with the diary before the auction date expires?’

  ‘Good idea! See what you can do.’

  ‘I already have my suspicions.’ Farrell grinned and turned swiftly on his heel before rushing out of the office. It had felt good to bring his boss some good news for once.

  *

  A break in the clouds; a solitary sunbeam pierced the heavy grey sky. Sir Eddie sat gazing at the sunlight glinting off the Thames. It was a sight he never tired of. A small boat cut silently through the swathe of light on the water, captured momentarily like a supporting actor desperate for the limelight. The bustling city was home to over seven million people. London had it all; the high rollers of the City and the homeless, and low-income families scratching for a living alongside. Yet, from here, high above the iconic river, none of that seemed to matter. It had mattered once, when he had been an idealist. He had wanted to make a difference, but the realisation of his own mortality had abruptly dumped him into a bottomless pit of self-pity that seemed to have no end. He smiled at the thought of owning the diary. The disc was merely a bonus - a novelty, but the diary was everything to him. After thirty years of searching, it was now so close to his arthritic fingers he could feel its cold leather cover, the rhythmic pulses of the words written nearly a hundred years ago throbbing through his fingertips. He couldn’t read those words yet, couldn’t dare to hope to know their secrets, but whatever the pages contained he was certain that it amounted to more than just ramblings in a diary. It would lead him to a discovery of monumental importance. It would give him the chance to make one final effort to ascend from the pit of impending death and provide the raw materials to extend his life and change the world forever.

  CHAPTER 3

  Swansea Valley

  The bells of the nearby Anglican Church rang loudly on an otherwise peaceful Sunday morning.

  The smartly dressed man smiled as he walked past the imposing church through the adjacent neatly manicured park towards his own place of worship.

  Birds chirped and tweeted incessantly from a safe distance as the man entered the chapel through the side door and sat at the back. This was his pew, a cold and unforgiving wooden plank his family had guarded for generations.

  The footprint of the Penuel Chapel was smaller than the man’s house. The addition of a u-shaped balcony ensured it had met the high demand of nonconformists at the turn of the twentieth century, but the eighty or so pews, so much in demand back then, were never full these days.

  He inhaled the smell of damp and watched the slowly shifting beams of white light from the clear glass windows.

  There had been a time when latecomers would have to stand at the back for the whole of the service. Times had changed, and he was sad and angry at the way the chapels had begun to lose their place in modern society. The number of abandoned and converted buildings now outnumbered those still offering services by lay-preachers, and he was frustrated that people had lost their connection with their religion and with God and furious that it had been allowed to happen.

  Holder was early. The service always began at eleven, and it was only nine-thirty. Although he no longer lived in the town, he still liked to visit Penuel whenever he had business in the area.

  Now he felt like an intruder. He was sure that God no longer listened to his prayers. He had no morals, had broken too many of the Commandments to be a soul worthy of redemption, yet he still derived comfort from speaking to God. How did others speak ‘with’ God? He never spoke WITH God. His conversations were always one-way.

  He took a small pearl-handled switchblade knife from his jacket pocket and stabbed the point into the backrest of the pew in front.

  Chip. A small piece of wood flew into the air.

  Memories of his family; he had always prayed for them, every night without fail. But that was becoming harder. The names of his dearly departed seemed to be increasing exponentially with each passing year.

  ‘Please keep my beloved wife and my mother and father safe with you.’

  Chip. Another small piece of wood flew into the air.

  ‘Look after all those I’ve said prayers for in the past.’

  Chip.

  ‘Help me to prevail in all I do.’

  Chip.

  Chip.

  ‘Give me strength and forgive me, God, for all the things I fail to do.’

  Chip. Chip. Chip.

  The knife was folded and
returned to his jacket pocket. He was late for a meeting, but that was good and something he had learned from his previous life. Keep them waiting so they’ll know who’s in charge.

  He sat in quiet contemplation for a moment and smiled at his handiwork. Not exactly a perfect carving, but there was no doubt that the freshly cut yellow lines made a clear impression on the darkly aged oak. The preacher would pray for his forgiveness. None of the modern breed of lay-priests seemed to have the balls to condemn anyone anymore. The blood and thunder of the past had been replaced by reason and understanding. They had sold out.

  Holder stood, stepped into the aisle, bowed his head sadly and opened his umbrella as he walked out into the rain.

  He quickly crossed the river bridge to the main commercial street leading to a small cafe in the nearby town centre.

  Four men silently occupied plastic seats around a circular table in the Mimosa cafe. All were dressed in casual clothes, sipping hot drinks from steaming mismatched mugs. This was the first occasion the men had met, although they knew each other only too well.

  Holder walked in, shook his umbrella into a stand by the door, and took his place in the only vacant seat.

  An Asian man coughed. ‘Gentlemen, I am pleased that we are all here. I believe that it is vital that we work together to resolve the threat that faces us all.’ He turned to the newcomer and made the introductions. ‘My name is Hassan. I am glad you could join us, Mr Holder.’

  A large man with an Italian accent nervously avoided direct eye contact with the new arrival. ‘You may call me Giuseppe and I have been delegated to present the proposal to you. It is a matter of considerable concern, and something that we...’ he tipped his head in the direction of the others, ‘...are all keen to resolve as a matter of urgency. This is something that affects us all and must be settled before anyone else becomes involved.’